The present invention relates to a running toy having front and rear wheels, and in particular, to a running toy which can provide two toy styles including a high-floor pick-up style wherein the toy body is kept bent and a low-floor buggy style wherein the toy body is stretched.
Conventionally, as one example of running toy of this kind, there is disclosed a running toy in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H7-313738 which was filed by the present applicant. This running toy is constructed such that a toy body portion on the affront wheel side and a toy body portion on the rear wheel side are bendable to move close to the rear wheels with the front and rear wheels being kept faced to each other, and that the front and rear wheels can be individually driven and controlled using a couple of drive motors so as to enable the running toy to perform, in the steering operation of the running toy, a sharp right or left turn. As a result, it is possible for the running toy in the off-road driving to push aside or ride over a relatively large obstacle and the like by bending the toy body, or to avoid the obstacle by sharply turning the toy body, thereby enabling smooth driving of the running toy.
Certainly, the aforementioned prior art has an advantage of enabling the running toy to take various driving forms, such as forward movement, rearward movement, right and left sharp turns, etc. However, the running toy has a problem that it precludes from taking various driving forms by automatically turning its construction into various toy styles, and hence, the running toy of the prior art is not able to drive in interesting various toy styles.
The present invention has been made to solve the aforementioned problem, and therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a running toy which can offer two toy styles, i.e. a high-floor pick-up style and a low-floor buggy style wherein the toy body is stretched, thereby making it possible to perform a variety of interesting driving, such as an off-road driving or a high speed driving.
The running toy according to the present invention is characterized in that a rear-end portion of a fore undercarriage with front wheels is pivotally coupled, via an undercarriage bending means, with a fore-end portion of a rear undercarriage with rear wheels, that a fore toy body is attached to the fore undercarriage and a rear toy body is attached to the rear undercarriage, that the fore toy body and rear toy body are sustained by a sustaining means such that these car bodies move parallel toward or away from each other, and that a rear-wheel driving means for driving at least either the front wheels or the rear wheels is provided therein.
Preferably, the front wheels are supported by a front wheel-supporting undercarriage which is pivotally supported by the fore undercarriage, and a posture adjusting means is interposed between the fore undercarriage and the front wheel-supporting undercarriage. This posture adjusting means comprises an arm holder interlocked with the undercarriage bending means, an arm holder fixed to the front wheel-supporting undercarriage, and an arm linking these two arm holders to each other, and is provided with a buffering device. It is also preferable that this running toy comes under the control of a radio controller.
According to this running toy constructed as described above, when the undercarriage bending means is actuated to bend the undercarriage of the running toy, the running toy can be turned its construction into a high-floor pick-up style. On the other hand, when the undercarriage bending means is actuated to stretch the undercarriage of the running toy, the running toy can be turned its construction into a low-floor buggy style. Namely, the change in the construction into two ways allows a variety of interesting driving.